Ask HN: Is it a strength that HN's UI has not changed over many years?

I find myself lately gravitating back to older communities that survived the social media wave on the Internet because they seem to be a bit better at keeping track and promoting visibility of meaningful conversations, despite traditional functional flaws, screen sizing, and often dreadful large threaded views. I think a major strength is that most of these traditionally designed sites/apps still emphasize chronological order for content and posts, which makes the experience less prone to manipulation and more timely.

It also seems with older sites like HN and online bulletin boards, content can be bookmarked, and it's easier to correspond with users on a more regular basis. I think the most frustrating trend on modern sites and apps is that content I want to see simply disappears into a sea of other things I don't want to see, and that searching to find that content is futile, as results are often gamified and spammed into oblivion.

I miss IRC now, I miss bulletin boards despite all the flaws, I miss old school web sites that had the same content in the same place even after hitting refresh.

In my opinion, traditionally highly effective, favorable, and functional user-experience-based design has been thrown out the window lately as a trend; apps now are very often geared towards tracking, sponsored post placement, and profit/revenue optimization goals, rather than towards creating favorable user experiences.

It makes me wonder (despite some issues of course) if HN is still one of the best places to communicate and post serious matters BECAUSE it's UI/UX hasn't changed (In major ways) for many years?